The throwing star, or cross-knife as the Noi-Guin have it, is typically a weapon of distraction, to put off-balance, to cause minor injury; but in the hands of a Red Sister such projectiles become deadly.

The bandolier above Sister Thorn’s blackskin held two dozen stars, pointed for penetration rather than bladed for blood, each set about a central ring weighted with lead. They spat from her fingers as she ran between the pillars, the Pelarthi shocked by the sudden swiftness of her. Eye, throat, forehead. Punching in through soft flesh and hard bone. Eye, throat, a mouth opened to roar for battle swallowing the star’s swift rotation amid broken teeth. Forehead, throat. Here a gerant, huge in his armour, pot helm visored, a heavy gorget about his neck. The star arced as it flew, taking him in the wrist just beneath his gauntlet, tearing tendon and artery, leaving his great-sword slipping from numb fingers.

There is, in the act of destruction, a beauty which we try to deny, and a joy which we cannot. Children build to knock down, and though we may grow around it, that need runs in us, deeper than our blood.

Violence is the language of destruction, flesh so often the subject, fragile, easy to break beyond repair, precious: what else would we burn to make the world take note?

Your death has not been waiting for your arrival at the appointed hour: it has, for all the years of your life, been racing towards you with the fierce velocity of time’s arrow. It cannot be evaded, it cannot be bargained with, deflected or placated. All that is given to you is the choice: meet it with open eyes and peace in your heart, go gentle to your reward. Or burn bright, take up arms, and fight the bitch.

There is in every delicate thing, no matter how precious, nor how beautiful, a challenge. Break me. No bride of the Ancestor can see life as anything but the fragile, wondrous gift that it is. From the alpha to the omega we are all brothers, sisters, children, born of unity, bound for unity. And yet … and yet … those who take the red are trained to listen. Break me.

Thorn carried in each limb every hour of her training, every day and year bound into the muscle of her arms, written along the length of her legs, beaten into the hardness of stomach and thigh. She knew five dozen ways to kill, she knew them with a lover’s intimacy, and in the execution perhaps lust also played its role – for what is lust but a hunger? And hunger must be fed.

Any weapon begs use. The blade itself incites to violence. And those who mistake the red children of Sweet Mercy for anything other than a weapon are fools of their own breed.

Flicked wrists, arms cracked like whips, and throwing stars take flight, possessed of their own fierce rotation, bound on twisted parabolas. No mother gave her child so much direction, or set them spinning along their course through the world with such care. Governed only by the forces that steer the true stars through dark heavens, Thorn’s bright offspring wing their way: deterministic, to known targets, trusted and independent, requiring no more of her attention.

Spears are thrown in surprise, arrows released in confusion. She is among them and gone, a fleeting target in black and tattered red. Spears fly high, hit pillars, find the flesh of allies rather than foe. One Pelarthi, ice-blooded, hawk-eyed, looses at the flickering of her enemy, leading her mark. The arrow glances from Thorn’s shoulder as she turns, the blackskin stiffening to resist the missile’s speed. The temporary rigidity of her armour hampers Thorn’s reply. Her star tears skin at the corner of the archer’s eye, rips her ear, and hurtles on into the chest of the man behind.

And at last Thorn’s hands are empty, her bandolier slack, two dozen of the Pelarthi in possession of her steel, some lying sprawled, trampled by their kin as they choke on blood; others still standing, hunched about their wound, the fight gone from them, replaced by hurt, the sorrow of steel, tears of blood.

She draws her sword. The blade is long, thin, describing a slight curve, its edge cruel enough to bite through steel. Though it whispers from the scabbard somehow it is loud enough to cut a moment’s silence. This. This is where the Red Sister’s heart beats – on the edge. With her other hand she pulls the knife from her belt.

Pelarthi surround Thorn on three sides, bathing her in the light of their torches, stepping over their dead, their footprints crimson on the limestone. Many and more. A human tide, scores hurrying to flank her, glimpsed between the pillars. The foremost of them are slow now, watching, eyes upon the brightness of her blade, on the cutting edge upon which the fire’s light is divided.

Thorn stands savagely still but she walks the Path and with each step she gathers to herself the raw and fundamental power that both divides and joins creation. She is still, but the energies that build within tremble across her, making the air shake and the light dance.

The Pelarthi watch her – the tall and the short, the wiry and the strong, bearers of axe and sword, of spear and bow. Paint-faced women, lips snarled about their teeth, pant for violence, hair wild or in braids, some spattered with the blood of friends. Grim-eyed men, clutching their sharpened iron before them, grind their jaws, muscles twitching beneath chain and leathers, waiting, waiting for the moment.

They expect her to run. They know she will run. And she does. But at them.

There is a joy in destruction and when Thorn raises her head to regard the ruin all about her there is a white smile among the scarlet dripping of her sweat. The blood is not hers, not all of it. The speed of a hunska, the stark efficiency of the sisterhood’s blade-lore, and the channelled power of the Path have combined in one young woman to make a slaughter such has never been seen upon the Rock of Faith. She stands panting, both blades crimson from point to hilt, weary enough to fall, but with close on a hundred mercenaries dead about her. In places they are heaped.

Thorn straightens, snarling against the pain of broken ribs. She is cut, her cheek opened, a puncture wound high on her thigh. Her speed is diminished: the Path has thrown her and lies now beyond reach, but her foe have known terror and will not approach. The remainder watch her from back amongst the pillars. Jackals stalking a wounded lion, too timid for attack, too hungry to run.

The spear takes her between the shoulders. She should have heard it being thrown, sensed its approach, known it was coming. But it came too swiftly – hunska-fast. Blackskin turns iron hard, moulded about the spear point, driven half an inch into her flesh but arresting the missile, denying it her life. She turns as she falls, sprawling amid the gore.

Someone is leaving the Pelarthi ranks. A woman.

‘S-sister?’ Thorn’s vision is blurred with blood, with sweat, with exhaustion. The woman is not Pelarthi – but she holds a second spear. Thorn blinks and in that moment recognizes one who was once her sister.

It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient skill.

The dark-haired woman hoists her spear.

‘Don’t!’ Thorn raises her hand, not asking for mercy but in protest. This is wrong. ‘Don’t do it, C—’

The spear is thrown.

21

‘Welcome to Grey Class.’ Sister Flint rose from her desk to take Nona’s merit scroll, set with the seals of the five mistresses in acknowledgement of her satisfactory performance in Blade, Spirit, Academia, Shade, and Path. ‘You will be sitting by Alata, over here.’ The class mistress steered Nona from the door to her own seat. By dint of being considerably over six foot tall, though nowhere much more than one foot wide, Sister Flint managed to make Nona feel smaller at twelve than Sister Oak had when she first arrived in Red Class not having reached her tenth birthday.